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Rick,great input!
Say you wanted to give me a lesson on a soundcheck
technique dealing with different acoustics,rooms halls
etc. that will make my life easier,but i think we can
all use such valuable info in this forum now.
anytime we are ready bro!
cheers
Luis
(P.S.I promise ill invite you a couple of cold ones)
--- "loop.pool" <looppool@cruzio.com> wrote:
> I've been following this discussion about
> getting a drummer to sync to a loop or having a
> drummer
> (or any musician) trigger a midi device that will
> then work off
> of the drummers time (continually retriggering the
> loop).
>
>
> I've had a lot of experience with this and I believe
> the latter option
> will never work satisfactorily for this reason:
>
> When human beings entrain they constantly have micro
> speed ups and slow
> downs to do so with each other (because we are not
> perfect and our timing
> varies
> subtely even with the most acute of studio trained
> musicians).
>
> What happens is that you don't play a measure of
> 140.25 BPM against a measure of 140.28 BPM and then
> compensate in the next measure by playing a measure
> of 140.31 BPM
> hoping that your partner will stay steady with
> 140.28 BPM as a midi tempo
> reading device will do.
>
> Do you get what I'm saying? I feel like it's hard
> to explain so forgive me
> if I'm not communicating well.
>
> In other words, we are stretching the time beat to
> beat, 16th note by 16th
> note to stay entrained with each other.
>
> When a drummer triggers a midi device to then
> trigger the BPM of the loop
> you are driving there are entire bars
> of constant drumming that are compensating for the
> last measure that may
> have been slightly out of sync.
>
> It is really audible when this happens and there is
> no intrinsic way around
> the problem. We're not even going to
> mention the problem of midi latency which can
> happen.
>
> Consequently, I would advise people to have the
> drummer learn how to
> entrain to the pre-existing loop.
> This will mimic real playing much more accurately,
> and the percieved lock of
> the loop and the real players
> will sound much better than trying to have the
> drummer drive the whole
> engine.
>
> ******************
> I encountered this situation a lot in the early 80's
> when confronting the
> situation of bands that were using
> the new Midi language and sequencing in a live
> setting. All kinds of
> devices were marketed and sold then to
> let the drummer 'drive' the band. I never heard a
> single instance where
> the feel was excellent. There was an inherent
> stiffness
> do to the BPM changing only at the bar line.
>
> The same problem happened when I was doing a lot of
> studio sessions,
> drumming for singer/songwriters.
> Many of them had never played with a band before and
> certainly not a
> metronome and when you are trying to crank out
> relatively inexpensive demos you don't have time to
> teach the
> singersongwriter how to track to a metronome in a
> relaxed
> and musical way.
>
> Consequently, we had to either play the basic
> tracks (usually without the
> singer sonwriter) to a click track or
> just be content with 'lumpy grooves'.
>
> Several times I had to play with musicians who were
> not sophisticated
> session players so they couldn't play to a click
> very well.
>
> We tried to solve this by giving only me, the
> drummer the click track, and
> having them listen to me as the time and play to me.
>
> The problem with this approach is that I am
> continually struggling to stay
> on the click because the other musicians are
> fluctuating their time. Normally, we would just
> entrain to each other and
> go with the human results but again, frequently
> I'd find myself playing with a whole rhythm section
> in a band that just
> wasn't very acute.
>
> We ended up all playing together.............all
> playing to a click track
> and then going back and erasing the band's tracks
> and having them go home and practise to my drum
> tracks so that they could
> retrack more accurately.
>
> Lol, this is a band's worst nightmare about being
> signed............having
> to leave their organic process because some producer
> is to anal about the results he or she wants.
> Honestly, though, there
> were a lot of musicians who just weren't ready for a
> recording session and
> we did the best we could to serve them.
>
> Butch Vig found that Nirvana could not track tight
> tracks at all. He said
> later that Dave Grohl was the only professional
> musician
> in the group. Consequently, he had the band play
> sections of the song
> over and over and over. He then went through and
> found the tightest
> sounding bars and looped them.
>
> "Nevermind" is a looped record. When Cobain and
> the rest heard about it,
> or so the story goes, they were furious.
> I can understand, but in retrospect, "Nevermind"
> was Cobain's masterpiece.
> A lot of people who don't like it's produced feel
> think that "In Utero" was
> a better sounding record. It was the reaction of
> the band to Vig's
> production and was produced by
> Steve Albini ( a great non-producing producer who
> has an incredible knack
> for recording fantastic sounds and getting a band to
> make great performances and a favorite producer of
> mine).
>
> Interestingly, by the time that Nirvana tracked 'In
> Utero' they had really
> improved as a band and had a lot more live shows
> under their belts so they
> tracked pretty well.
>
> In the long run, my advice is hope and prey that
> your drummer is really
> interested in growing as a musician and willing to
> put in the time to learn
> how to play to loops.
>
> I have found that the majority of drummers out their
> tend not to want to
> take that formidable but completely feasible task.
>
> Also, it just won't work unless you have excellent
> monitoring of the loop
> for you drummer.
> Unfortunately, as my wife just commented, "That's
> difficult because in the
> real world, finding good monitoring is a bitch."
> What this means is that you will have to be prepared
> to invest in a separate
> loop monitor for at least your drummer because you
> cannot
> depend on a venue to help you to sound good.
>
> I actually found a great solution for this:
> Inexpensive wireless
> headphones (about $60-$90) from Radio Shack). They
> are closed ear and yet
> you can hear enough of the outside music (i.e., your
> drumming) to play
> accurately and with feeling.
>
> I advise that you money is far better spent
> purchasing alternate monitoring
> than a device that the drummer can trigger to then
> retrigger the
> live looping start point.
>
> Good luck with it, whichever way it goes.
>
> I'll be happy to correspond with anyone who wants to
> learn how to do this
> but is having a vexing time with it.
>
> yours, in search of good time and a good time,
> Rick Walker
>
=== message truncated ===
www.luis-angulo.com
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